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The Prince of Tides: (James Newton Howard) The
directorial career of Barbra Streisand was reaffirmed with the success
of the 1991 romantic drama,
The Prince of Tides, for which she
also produced and acted in a lead role. Purists of Pat Conroy's novel of
the same name weren't thrilled by an adaptation of the story that
shifted the focus squarely on the role of the psychologist played by
Streisand, but the movie was nevertheless nominated for seven Academy
Awards (though did not win any). In the other lead role of the story is
Nick Nolte, whose character, like all of his family, is troubled by a
traumatizing event that happened in his youth. When his sister suffers a
psychological breakdown, he travels from his native region of America's
South to New York to assist Streisand's character in unlocking the past
and reuniting the dysfunctional family. During this painful process, the
two leads begin a doomed romantic relationship that helps steer both on
a better path in their own lives. Although Streisand did not sing for
the movie,
The Prince of Tides was nevertheless viewed as a
vehicle for her cinematic career and continued public enthusiasm for her
translated into immense box office success. To maximize the appeal of
the film, Streisand hired John Barry to write a predictably sappy
original score; the composer was fresh off of his success for
Dances
With Wolves and couldn't have been more popular at that moment.
After writing the main theme for
The Prince of Tides, Barry
refused to relocate from his residence in New York to Los Angeles so
that Streisand could keep close tabs on his work. If there was one pet
peeve that bothered Barry more than any other, it was a director
hovering over his shoulder. He later commented that Streisand was "an
extreme case" in this regard and that is why he walked away from the
project. That theme he wrote before exiting, however, was performed and
released as "Moviola" on the 1992 Barry compilation of the same name and
later adapted into the cue "Flight Over New York" (with irony in the
title) in his score for the 1995 IMAX film,
Across the Sea of
Time. It's a stunning theme, despite its redundancy in structure
when compared to Barry's other output of the time, and its deeply
enriching and melodramatic stature may have benefitted the redemptive
conclusion in
The Prince of Tides quite well. Instead, Barry was
replaced by James Newton Howard (which would happen multiple times in
the decade), whose career in film scoring was still in its developmental
stages and containing a fair number of innocuous dramas requiring
instrumental filler music of a purely background purpose.
Outside of the realm of film music, Howard was also
very well connected in the pop industry, a long-time keyboardist for
Elton John and conductor of backing orchestral material for numerous
mainstream artists, including Streisand. Whether that experience or
reports that Howard was Streisand's "companion" at the time led to his
assignment on
The Prince of Tides is unknown, but the score he
produced sounds very consistent with the kind of anonymously pleasant
backing you'd expect to hear in a Streisand song. With the exception of
some bubbly moments of exuberance ("Daddy's Home") and straight pop
romance ("The Fishmarket" and "Love Montage"), the majority of
The
Prince of Tides is treated to tonally accessible string layers with
occasional brass support and piano solos. A few tingling piano lines are
reminiscent of James Horner techniques of the era. Howard contributes
many themes to the film, including individual identities for all of the
major characters, but two of them stand apart. The primary theme is for
the main family and the Nolte character's bonding with it; anchoring
"Main Title" and "End Credits," this theme is expressed with full
sincerity in "They Love You Dad" and "The Reunion," representing the
film well but not distinguishing itself from a typical Marc Shaiman
idea. The love theme for the two leads is a nice diversion in the middle
portion of the score, providing optimism in "The Hallway" and "Love
Montage." Other ideas foreshadow
Waterworld ("Tom Comes Home")
and are occasionally expressed with striking instrumental colors (the
trumpet solos late in "Tom's Breakdown"), but none of them is
particularly memorable. These melodies do inform the second of two
Streisand songs recorded specifically for the album, "Places That Belong
to You," accompanied by orchestral backing that would fit nicely with
the rest of the score. One of the knocks against the music for
The
Prince of Tides is that its affable demeanor is too consistent from
start to finish, not really attempting to underline the development of
characters in the movie. The multitude of oboe solos do begin to shine
in the latter portions, but on the whole, the score is consistently
saccharine to a fault. His work for
The Prince of Tides earned
Howard his first Oscar nomination, though the recognition was more
likely due to the film's success than the conservatively streamlined
nature of the music. The composer has written several scores similar to
this one (many of them unreleased because of their generic nature), and
while the album is a pretty and effortless listening experience, the two
Streisand songs at its end, both crispy recorded and well performed, are
the lasting highlight. That said, Howard achieved his task with ease for
this project, and while it isn't as overblown as Barry's music would
have been, it's a charming mood-setter.
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The insert includes a synopsis of the film and notes from the director
about the two songs.
